While starting to restore my Midway Deluxe Shooting Gallery ( https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/midway-deluxe-shooting-gallery-restore ), I had done a lot of research on these types of games. I had seen the page on pinrepair about the Midway Rife Gallery. I had heard about this machine before, but there was even less about it online than the Deluxe Shooting Gallery. I found 1 grainy video of it playing, 1 old Ebay listing, 1 page on Arcade Museum, and 1 page on PinRepair. That was it. It's the rarest of the Midway compressor games, and I never expected to find one. Browsing Facebook one day and there it was for sale. It had been up for sale for a couple of days and I assumed someone else must have seen it and snatched it up. But I figured I'd at least shoot the seller a message on the off chance it was still available. A couple of messages back and forth and it was mine. I didn't ask too many question in my excitement, but I don't think anything would prepare me for what was inside this game.

This is going to be a slower restore than my last one. I'm going to be working on this as time permits, and since this one is going into my collection, I'll be thoroughly going through it.

Initial Assessment

Here are some pics from before I got the game.Looks pretty good right?

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I had Bob Cunningham drop the game off. Everyone comments on how large these games are. I didn't feel that way about it until I had 2 of them in my shop. Having to navigate around them became painful quickly. Everything is there. It even had the often missing clown. I unwrapped the game, opened the back door, and then quickly shut it. I consider myself to have a strong stomach, but the smell of ammonia almost knocked me over. Braving the smell one more time I opened the front door and everything became clear.

Rats..The entire game was filled with the largest rats nest I had ever seen. The inside of the cabinet was full top to bottom left to right of leaves, droppings, scraps of newspaper, and wiring. This is a picture after I had removed half of the nest in the cabinet
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The previous tenants had lived in the cabinet, in the backbox, in the open motors, they even lived in the wire forms around the bulbs.

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Initial Assessment

I had to clear out the nest to see what I was actually working with and to help with the smell. I took off the marquee and removed the glass sides. Then I had to removed the main target and the floor of the interior of the game.
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I filled a 40 gallon trashcan with rat nest/shit. While clearing the main cabinet I found all the screws for the legs and a package of NOS balls.

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Initial Assessment

With the cabinet emptied of the nest, I could clearly see what need to be done.

1) The wiring harness from the backbox to the front of the game needs to be repaired. Rats chewed through it. Luckily, they didn't disconnect any wires in the front of the game or eat them. They just cut them. I assume to be able to access the back of the game easier.
2) A couple of the relays are missing wires to one of their lugs.
3) An armature is missing from the clown stepper unit.
4) Some wires have been detached from some of the stepper units.
5) Some wires have been cut on the Jones plug that connects the main target to the backbox
6) All wires have been cut from the skill rating lights behind the backglass
8 ) General rust and corrosion
9) The entire cabinet and all the mechs, switches, etc need to be cleaned from the rats making nests.
10) All the vacuum tubing and the cardboard tube running to the main target need to be replaced
10) The most challenging problem is the rifle. Thankfully the mechanism is all there or I wouldn't have even bothered buying the game, but the stock was broken off at some point. I'll have to source a new stock and mill it to fit the mechanism.
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Initial Assessment

After going through the game, I wasn't feeling too good about the project. So, I decided to stop focusing on the problems and focus on the good.

1) The cabinet is in great condition. A couple of gouges here and there but it solid. The artwork is well preserved. It's not perfect, but I've seen worse cabinets.
2) The plexi in the front is in great shape. No cracks or missing pieces. The plexi in the front is a custom shape. The arch in the plexi allows for a similar curved piece of plexi attached to the front of the rifle to ride inside of it. Between this and the chain attaching the rifle to the cabinet, it limits the amount of movement from the rifle.
3) The backglass is in amazing condition. The backglass is plexiglass. I thought with rats literally living and sleeping next to it that I would be in rough shape. There area couple of small pricks of paint missing and a few spider flaking parts no bigger than the head of an eraser. I give it a 9.5/10. It will need to be sealed.
4) This game came out of an operators building in my home state about an hour from where I live. I only found 2 tax stickers on the game. One from 1965 and one from 1966. There is a strong chance this game was only on route for 2 years before the rifle stock snapped off and someone shoved it into storage. The reason I say this is the condition of the main target and the condition of pellets/target balls. There is minimal wear on the pellets and the main target graphics show little signs of being shot at. I see no reason to reproduce them like I did on my last project. Even the duck targets still have all of their paint and show little signs of being hit.
5) There were about 40 pellets in the game and 6 red target balls. The game only needs 20-25 pellets and 4 red target balls.
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I'm hoping so. I really think it's a diamond in the rough

Thanks. It should be fun

Like my boss says, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time."

Sourcing Missing Parts

I didn't have to go into this for my last game since everything was there, but for this game I needed to source some parts. This took me about 2 months. Finding parts for these games is a pain in the butt. Hopefully the info below will help someone in the future who's looking for parts. Some game specific parts you aren't going to find like the gun or the clown. I've spent a lot of time looking for a clown on my last project. Everyone knows about PBR, Marco, etc for parts, but for stuff like this, you need to go to a few lesser know places.For this game, here is what was needed/missing

1) 10 cent coin mech

These aren't the easiest to find. You can buy them from Crow River Trading(http://www.crowriver.com/ps/coinslides3.htm), but with shipping it would come out to about $54.00. I wasn't willing to pay that. I bought mine from Ebay seller: nabours. At the time I'm writing this, they have 1 more 10c coin mech. The one I received from them was packed really well and looked almost NOS. I tested it and it worked flawlessly. 10/10 would buy from them again.

2) Armature for one of the stepper units

I found what looked to be the correct armature at PBR (http://www.pbresource.com/special.html) listed as Midway Drive Arm and Pawl Assembly MWY-S6, but I couldn't verify that was the one I needed. The stepper unit in this game is the same stepper unit for the bear in a Midway Shooting Gallery. So, I bought the Bear control unit from http://www.rempinball.com/. He has some odds and ends for these types of games. I was more than I wanted to spend, but supply and demand..

3) The ball load coil V23-900

It's not missing, but it's been submerged in poop. It should still work,but I wanted to be safe. Also, this game unlike the others of the same type needs 2 ball load coils V23-900. One is for releasing the ball out of the gun, but the other is for the main target. If you look at the 3rd pic in the second post here,you'll see a tube on the left side. The tube is used to push a red ball from the base to the top of the main target using the air from the compressor. When the switch at the bottom of the zig zag in the main target is tripped by the ball, the blast gate at the back of the main target open and propels another ball to the top. Unlike other the other games, the compressor is always on in this game. Since this coil is critical to the game working, I set out to find one...and couldn't. Weeks later a parts dealer I had done business with before messaged me and surprisingly found one... a NOS one. The dealer is oldtomcat on Ebay(ebay.com link: usr). He used to be an operator and has tons of NOS motors. If you don't see something listed, shoot him a message and he'll check for you. Really nice guy.

4) New cloth wire

I wanted to keep the machine as original as possible down to the wiring. too-many-pins had help me find some switches for my last game. When I heard Skip was selling the business, I contacted him about these parts. He's super knowledgeable and while I'm happy that he sold the business, I'll miss doing business with him. He told me that the color combination for the wiring in my game was only used for a short amount of time. He wound up selling me an entire wiring harness from a Bally woodrail from the same era. I'll try to get a picture of it. It's massive with color correct wiring for my game. I don't think I'll need cloth wire ever again. Side note: another good place to find cloth wire is on Ebay. It's used by musicians that like the vintage wire for amps, but it's usually sold in spools of single color combinations.
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5) Fuse Block

The fuse clips were at their end of life. I had stolen a couple of fuses from this game when troubleshooting the other game. Every fuse I removed the clips broke. I could have replaced it with a modern fuse block, but where is the fun in that? Skip came through again. One of the things I liked about him was that when you needed 1 item, he sold you 5 of them. I needed some wire, he sold me an entire harness. I needed 1 fuse block, he sold me 19. There was a reason he did this. He told me he had sat down one day and calculated the minimum amount he needed to put on each order just to break even. And that was the minimum amount he had to sell on each order to not lose money. He wasn't doing this to get rich. He genuinely enjoyed helping people bring their games back to life. I ended up with 2 5 position fuse blocks and a ton of single fuse blocks all loaded with vintage fuses.

6) Rifle Stock

I did a lot of research to try to find an exact make and model of the rifle used. Most everyone told me to use a Remington 22 stock. The issue was the original stock on the game didn't have a notch for the bolt action like the 22 rifles had. I even went as far as reading through a book that showed every gun Remington made. The only conclusion I could come to is that Midway bought solid blank stocks from Remingtion that weren't milled,and then Midway did all the milling. Which makes sense. Why would Remington mill the stocks to accept their hardware, if they were just going to sell them to Midway. It would have been cheaper just to sell them blank stocks. I ended up buying a Remington 514 stock from Ebay for $30. The finish is trashed. I didn't want to buy a nice stock since I'm assuming I won't mill it correctly the first time and this one will be practice. My other hobby is woodworking. I have a full woodworking shop with all the necessary machines to mill the replacement stock, but I've never done anything like this. Should be a good learning experience.

7) Schematics
PBR didn't have schematics for the game. They even had me check my spelling twice since they didn't have anything about the game. It's one of the few games they don't have schematics for. I ended up buying them from pinballmike.com.

8 ) Pics of a properly wired game
The schematics helped with how to wire some of the chewed wires, but not all of them. So, I started hunting for people with this game to see if anyone could provide pictures of a working game. I found 6 people. That's not to say there isn't more, but that was all I could fine on the internet. 1 guy here on Pinside. 2 guys in one of my Facebook groups. Vintage Coin-Op Restorations has/had 2 of them. A now closed business in Arizona had one. Luckily, one of the guys in my Facebook group took some time and sent me photos of all the parts of his machine. This was huge and will prove to be invaluable! This will take a lot of the guesswork out of which wire goes where.

9) Bulbs
The bulbs in the game are replacements and they are broke anyway. My last game had the original Edison bulbs in it. As much as I wanted to keep them for this game, I ended up selling them with the last game. I haven't been able to find more. Here is a picture of the old bulbs. If anyone can identify them or tell me where to find some, please let me know
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Restoration Plan

I've been giving this project a lot of thought before starting. I want an original fully working machine. My intent for this project is not a straight off the production line kind of restore. My plan is to get it fully working while keeping the original paint, backglass, scenery, etc intact. I want to keep it as original as possible. Here is the tentative plan:

1) Remove, Clean, and Seal Backglass
2) Clean and Seal Cabinet
3) Replace Damaged Wiring
4) Clean/Adjust all relays, steppers, etc.
5) Fabricate New Gun Stock
6) Reassemble

Backglass

Anything that I have covered in my previous restore that is identical to this machine I won't be going over again, but I will make a note that the information is in the previous restore thread. Accessing the backglass is exactly the same as my previous game, so I'm not going to go through that again. It's getting cold here, and even though this machine has sat in a non climate controlled area for years, I don't want anymore damage done to the backglass.

I love the artwork on this backglass. There is so much detail.
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Here are some of the flaking areas
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And this is the back. There is rat pee and poop all over it. There is also leftover rubber from the lightbox stuck to it.
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The same process as the last restore is used to clean it. Just water and q tips. I'm using safety q tips that are used for small children. The swab is larger and there's less of a chance that the stick part with protrude and scratch something. This should give you an idea of how dirty it is
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Cleaning this was more difficult than last time. I had to be careful with the specks of poop. I didn't want to drag them while cleaning the glass and wind up scratching the paint. I had to constantly hold the glass up to a light to be able to tell if the speck was poop or flaking paint. My goal was to remove all the rat excrement and to clean where to bulbs will shine through. Attempting to get this fully clean is impossible. Take for instance this section of the woman's wrist
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If I kept scrubbing at this section, the paint will come off. I'd rather have this than a whole junk of the paint missing. Speaking of whole junks of paint missing.....
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While cleaning I didn't see the slightly lifted area on top of the 9, and it came right off. I kicked myself for awhile, but the backglass wasn't perfect to begin with. I called it a day on cleaning the glass. It will need another round of cleaning before it's sealed. I just need to shake off this mishap first before I'm confident enough to finish cleaning it.

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Cabinet Cleaning

I won't feel comfortable working on this machine much less having it in my home until it's been thoroughly cleaned. I plan to clean the exterior of the cabinet first and then remove everything from the cabinet to clean the inside. I feel like once I separate the back panel from the cabinet that is the point of no return for this restore.

I start to clean the outside of the cabinet I'm using Simple Green and a melamine sponge. I tested a small area of the back panel and it worked pretty well. For some reason all of the white paint on the cabinet is covered in a yellow/brown film. I'm guessing it's hardened cigarette smoke. There is discoloration all over the cabinet. Some of it came off with cleaning, but some of it might just be discoloration from age. I know I keep harping on how filthy this thing is, but these pics should really drive it home.

See the black edge here. I thought that there was no paint there. After a little scrubbing, it revealed paint. That's how thick the dirt is.
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Here are some before and afters
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On this last picture, you can see an issue I'm having with this cabinet. For some reason, they painted the white over the red. Some of the white paint, especially on the marquee, is almost chalk like now. If you clean it too vigorously, it spreads to the surrounding red and the white starts to become pink from the red under it bleeding through. I've done 1 round of cleaning, but like the backglass I think it will need a second round.

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Interestingly enough I've found a few places selling corrugated vacuum tubing. Mostly restaurant supply companies. I'll definitely link it here when I buy some since the tubing in this game is too far gone to salvage.

Yelobird is correct about the corrugation keeping the hose ID constant when pressure is applied from the compressor. I don't think it would be too critical for the hose that returns the balls to the compressor, but for the hose going from the compressor to the gun, the ID should be constant. Even if I could find some vinyl tubing at HD, I'd still go with the corrugated for the same reason I bought this many fuses just to replace the original fuse block. Try to keep components originalish..
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As a fellow engineer, I get where you're coming from, and in almost every other aspect of my life I'm right there with you about best tools. But my hobbies are my decompressing time away from my career. I like to turn that part of my brain off that says "You can improve upon this" or "I wonder if I can streamline that". Because that becomes a slippery slope where I'd end up ripping out all the electronics out of this game and replacing it all with a Rasberry PI running custom software to emulate the game logic . I have a soft spot for vintage electronics, machinery, and tools and love using them and keeping them original as possible as long as there are no safety concerns in doing so. Case in point, I just bought this project 1938 Parks Planer because I needed a planer for my shop. Who in their right mind would buy this instead of a modern lunchbox style planer from a big box store? This guy

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That's a nice looking machine. We better stop now before this thread get derailed with pics of my hand plane collection.

I got to look into that as an option. I was thinking more like this
https://www.amazon.com/Duda-Energy-STpvc075-025ft-Flexible-Resistant/dp/B01MYX3D35/ref=sr_1_1

I think it would be cool to see the ball moving through.

Nice find. Gonna order some. Glad the ball came in handy!

That was quick! Im excited to see them. I'm trying to find more time to work on this game but the end of the year is a busy time at work and home. Hopefully I can carve out a bit of time over the holidays and at least finish cleaning the cabinet. That's the goal

Clown Cleaning

Speaking of clowns, this game had one. To the uninitiated, this doesn't seem like too big of a deal, but these guys are either a) missing or b) complete mush 99% of the time. The rubber they are made out of wasn't built to last. I've seen a couple where it's just a black mush of rubber. Someone put a piece of electrical tape across the clown and the bracket. I guess to keep it from falling off. After gently removing the tape, I found damage. Over time, the electrical tape caused the section of rubber under the tape to get hotter than the rest and caused it to melt slightly. Here is the clown after I removed the tape. He's so happy to be free.
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Very dirty and you can see the crease from the tape. The clown has a brown/tan skin tone. I've seen ones like this and ones that have a white skin tone.

First round of cleaning, you can start to see the eyes and eyebrows.
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Second round of cleaning
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I'm finding everything on this game needs multiple rounds of cleaning. Once you get through the first layer or dirt/grime, there seems to be another layer. I'm starting to have a feeling that most of my restore time is going to be in trying to get everything clean.

Here's a sneak peek of what I've been working on during the break. Detailed write up to follow
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Already in the works!

Cabinet Disassembly

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. I got some solid shop time while on break. During that time I was able to completely strip the front of the cabinet. I tried to leave all of the assemblies attached to the wiring from the backbox so that I could remove the harness and components at the same time. I removed the coin mech holder, light socket, and disassembled the ball launch assembly. Everything came out pretty easily except for the staples holding the harness to the cabinet. I had to cut the staples because they wouldn't budge. I had to cut the wires to the compressor and the power switch to get the rest of the harness out.
Here are some break down pics
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Cabinet Disassembly

After this I removed the entire compressor and base from the game. There are two screws that connect the base to the cabinet. After unscrewing them the entire assembly comes out. I removed the compressor hood and was surprised at how nice the compressor looked. It will need to be gone through and cleaned. These compressors get finicky when they get too dirty
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Cabinet Disassembly

I then moved to the topside of the game. I removed the coin drop, slug rejector(completely seized), and the instruction card(fun scribbles on the back). Then I hit a big problem. The formica under the instruction card looked great. The rest of the formica inside the game cleaned up beautifully, but the formica outside the game is dull. I thought it was just dirt but after cleaning it and it drying it goes back to looking cloudy. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to restore this dull formica? I have found someone that makes a reproduction laminate that is a dead match to mine, but it's $800!!!

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Last thing to do was to remove the rivet nuts that the legs bolt into. This was painful. If you have noticed, I'm working on the game while it's on a dolly about 6 inches off the floor. This allows me to reach into the cabinet to do the work without my body rubbing against the cabinet paint. To make things easier, my wife bought me this for Christmas and I'm loving it.
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After everything was out, I took my orbital sander with 220 grit paper to the inside. It clean up really nice. The overspray from the cabinet was still under all that mess along with some really cool looking wood grain. I don't know why my camera is showing the white splotches still. The wood looks a lot cleaner in person.

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I did find a place. 100% match but they only sell it in 4' x 12' sections for $800. I'm thinking maybe a good polishing might bring it back

Cabinet Disassembly

I get 2 days outside of Federal holidays off of work. New Years Eve is one of them. No wife, no kids, no distractions. Time to finish disassembling the cabinet and try to tackle the formica.

First off, I removed the hose the connects the long carboard tube to the ball lift. Obviously it will need to be replaced.
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Next up was removing the score reel panel and back door. I'm going to save someone in the future 15 mins of frustration and multiple 4 letter words. You don't need to unscrew the hinges on the backdoor or tap out the hinge pins to remove the back door. Just lift the whole backdoor up and the hinge on the backdoor lifts off. Whoever you are, you can thank me later.
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Then I removed the grate in the back and the 2 labels that were behind the light panel.To remove the labels without further damage, I slide a small knife under the staples. Just enough to get something my pliers could grab without damaging the paper. Patience paid off and they came out easily and intact.

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Cabinet Disassembly

Almost there. Now on to the scenery and main target unit. I had only removed the main target once when I first got the machine to make sure it was all there. When I went to pull the main target assembly, I remembered why I put it back in the cabinet. It is crazy heavy. I'd estimate it around 40-50 pounds. Much heavier then the Deluxe Shooting Gallery. I put it on the bench to give it a good once over. Here's some pics of the scenery. I cleaned some spots here and there to show the condition. The scenery in it is in great shape and doesn't need replacing. The duck targets even have all of their original paint.
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Last up, I removed the rest of the shroud scenery. I got a lot of experience removing these from my last project. I still hate the screw nails.

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Formica Repair

Now that the cabinet is empty, I turned my attention to the formica. If you ran your hand across it, it was very rough. Almost like sandpaper. It was even dimpled a bit on the left side. I tried everything I could to get the color and shine back. I tried some carnauba wax first with a polisher to see if that would help. It didn't. After many different approaches, nothing worked. After studying it some more, the dimples I was feeling were actually where the inclusions should be. I came to the conclusion that the top had been worn away somehow. What I was seeing was the top few layers of the formica removed/worn away. I don't know how this happened. I decided the only way to somewhat restore this into something usable and comfortable to the touch was sanding.

I started by sanding a small section that would sit below the gun mount in case things went wrong. I worked up through 1000 grit and this was the result
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Success. I took a deep breath and did the same to the rest. It's important to note here that if you are trying to do the same thing, be very carefully when sanding formica with inclusions with lower grit sandpaper. You can remove the inclusions if you are too rough. In my case the inclusions, on the left side were already worn away. I did remove some inclusions while sanding, but it couldn't be helped. The surface had already been worn down to the inclusions and they were literally sitting on top. In order to get a smooth even surface to work with later, it had to be done. Here are some process pictures.
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I forgot the snap some finished photos. I'll try to remember to go back and get some to post here. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I'm going to stop messing with the formica for now and see how I like it. I might put a gel coat down over it to lock it down and bring the sheen up to where the interior formica is at. There is a little voice in the back of my head telling me to buy some silver and gold flakes and work them into the gelcoat to even out the missing inclusions..... I'm trying to ignore that voice.